It is good that the Hindus have at last realized that they have been kept down all these years in the name of a phony secularism, just as the poor Russians were kept down for three quarters of a century in the name an equally phony socialism.

Third — and it goes without saying — technology has changed the world. By 1989, personal computers were commonplace in the West, while mobile phones, though they were as big and heavy as a brick, were becoming a status symbol.

The second nonstate factor that has shaped the world since 1989 is the rise of religious extremism. This did not come out of the blue; Khomeini had taken power in Iran in 1979, while it was more than 20 years since the Six-Day War had both fueled a revival of political Judaism and led Arabs, dismayed by the failure of secular nationalism, to turn to Islam for succor.